Name: Mushrooms, Broiled, on Toast
Ingredients: good-sized mushrooms; butter; buttered toast; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Broiled, on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the stalks from the mushrooms and skin them if dirty; wash only if necessary.
Place the mushrooms in a baking tin in a Dutch oven and add a little butter on each.
Stew the mushrooms until tender.
Put the buttered toast in a hot dish and place the mushrooms on top.
Pour the juice from the mushrooms into the dish, sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt, and serve very hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).